apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Mostly just tomatoes. We've canned some as well as frozen some. We've also made several containers worth of tomato sauce and frozen them as well.

It may be a horrible year for tomatoes with early blight and all but it's been a fabulous year for my green beans and cucumbers. I've eaten, frozen and pickled both and there's more on the way.

10 pints of bread & butter pickles yesterday... 7 pints of dilly beans last Sunday.

I've been a woman possessed. I've been reading canning books in bed. The Joy of Pickling by Linda Ziedrich and The Big Book of Preserving the Harvest by Carol W. Costenbader are just 2.

Mostly tomatoes in the freezer thus far, but I have made a few batches of strawberry jam, and also made a batch of the green walnut liqueur (its percolating on top of the liquor cabinet as we speak!). Ive also finished a batch of basil digestif, and am getting set to make some with the tarragon.
Pickles and peaches in the works (nothing beats the taste of home-canned peaches!).
I've always put up my own stuff, so its fun to see a renewed interest in canning!

I did a batch of radishes earlier this summer, a batch of tomato salsa a couple of weeks ago and my small batch of kimchee is just about done fermenting. Before the season is out, I'll probably do another batch of salsa, some dill pickles and some pickled beets.

Everything is pretty small-batch though....I don't want to have to buy more jars, or find more storage space.

I've done a lot of refrigerator pickling, but I've yet to take my annual berry picking trip (for tomatoes, peaches, apples, blackberries & raspberries), which then results in canning and lots of sorbet. Nummy.

I've made dill pickles, hot pepper relish and zucchini relish so far. I have strawberries/mulberries/black raspberries in the freezer to make a "Backyard Berry" jam for the holidays. I also plan on making the Pickled Red Onions from yesterdays posting!

Small batches... Dill pickles, tomatoes, golden beets and peach butter. Can't wait to try them all!

The green walnuts are in the fridge in wine but I am a bit uncertain about the slight lateness of starting it. Is it too tannic? Should I reduce the soak time? There are $1.99 cherries in brandy/sugar and will do some peaches too before the summer is over. Luxury at holiday time.

I started canning a few years ago (4 or 5, I think) when our apple tree had an unexpectedly large yield. Since moving to the Pacific Northwest, with its amazing stone fruit, I've been canning a lot more, though.

This year, I did pickles for the first time: spiced peaches, 9-day "icicle" pickles, and cherries, so far. Plus peach butter, cinnamon-blueberry apple butter, strawberry jam, plain peaches (in syrup), and a variety of rhubarb chutneys and jams. (Here are the recipes I used.)

I've been doing a lot of pickling. We're overloaded with beans, so Pickled Dilly Beans has been my favorite. A bunch of friends have been asking for the recipe:
Pickled Dilly Beans

...but I've done a bunch of others as well. My favorite has been the pickled hot peppers.
Basic Technique: Pickled Vegetables

I made a few jams but fridge pickles are the best.

http://whitneyinchicago.wordpress.com/2009/06/21/pickling/

We have made wineberry, blackberry, and wild black cherry jam. Then we put up 2 different mint jellies. Next will be elderberry and rosehip jellies. SOme berry syrups, too. All made from wild foraged food, found in Connecticut.

Our cherry pepper plants are just starting to explode, so we'll be pickling them. I love pickled cherry peppers on pizza, and they're so expensive in the store!

We just turned 80 lbs of apricots into jam:

http://mostlyfoodstuffs.blogspot.com/2009/08/apricot-jam.html

As you might have guessed, I've been canning like a crazy person lately. I've done mostly jams (strawberry, rhubarb, apricot, peach, blueberry, blackberry and plum) and pickles (cucumber, beans, garlic scapes, jalapenos, okra, asparagus and carrots). I did rhubarb chutney earlier in the summer and I've still got my eye on a cucumber relish. Oh, and 10 quarts of tomatoes.

I'm exhausted just making that list.

Strawberry jam, okra pickles, spaghetti sauce, mint syrup.

so far.....pickled cucumbers, summer squash (http://southernfood.about.com/od/picklesrelishes/r/bl90718i.htm), peppers. onions. also, sour cherries, black and red currant jelly, tomato ketchup (the joy of cooking recipe is very good), tomato salsa (http://aces.nmsu.edu/pubs/_e/e-323.html). also frozen a few batches of blanched swiss chard and osaka purple greens as well as green beans.
oh just cooked down a hokkaido pumpkin and some apples and froze then to use for future pie filling or something.

i also have 7 jars of pine needle syrup out on the terrace (layers of sugar and pine needles left to melt down in sealed jars for 2 months.) it will be a medicinal sweetener for our herbal tea.

since we can't buy cilantro at the store here, i also just planted a couple more plants. i am going to try and preserve as much as possible by cutting up the leaves and freezing them with olive oil. i just break off small chunks of the block for cooking. it be great in curries during the cold months.

I have a question for those of you who are avid picklers--I made a batch of dill pickles yesterday, and I don't think it went well. I'm an experienced canner but not an experienced pickler. My cucumbers would not all get below the brine level--after processing, they are nearly all 1/4"or so above the top of the brine. And one jar lost a lot of its brine in processing--I guess I didn't tighten the rim quite enough, and it tipped a smidge while in there. (This seems to happen when I use the canner with the insert to keep the jars above the bottom--it has these two folding top pieces that don't fit well over pint jars.) Are my pickles safe to eat/store long term? I've stuck them in the fridge for now, even though they sealed, just in case.

Oh, and I've made strawberry and blueberry jam. I think I'll do peach chutney tomorrow. I have also frozen 3 batches of pesto using ice cube trays.

This year was my first crack at canning. I've made 4 types of jam so far: Apricot, Peach, Raspberry (sugar free), and Jalapeno.

I have an enourmous zucchini from the family farm that I may use to make Ginger Zucchini marmalade... but I also want to try some pickles too.

OUr garden isn't yeilding enough veggies to pickle. We have had a lot of beans but they come in short bursts. Usually there is enough for supper when we go pick.

I'll be doing pickled carrots this year as my mother in law planted me a couple rows in her big garden.

cherries, blueberries & strawberries in the freezer. half gallon mason jar of maraschino sour cherries. currently fermenting 4 pounds of kirby cucumbers and planning to roast and can 10 pounds of plum tomatoes tomorrow.

Drunken fig jam, amazing not too sweet fig jam put in wonderful small jars for gift giving. Cherries will be pitted and frozen tomorrow and I'll be freezing basil in ice cube trays. We froze a very small amount of strawberries this spring and I am already regretting that.

3 kinds of kimchi here - standard cabbage, cucumber, and mustard green types, with carrot, daikon radish, asian pear and watercress mixed in.

Small experimental batches of Jalapeno peppers to try new flavor combination's, we love the ginger and lime with pink peppercorns the best so far... also waiting for the fig tree to finish ripening and then it will be figs for days...

I made a jar of preserves from some blackberries I picked, but I ate it all already! last night I made two jars of pasta sauce from a bunch of tomatoes someone brought in to work from their garden...yum!

Last week we canned 10 pints of fresh-pack cucumber pickles and 4 pints of green beans. Last night we canned 43 pounds of whole, stewed heirloom tomatoes. Looking forward to fermented pickles later this week.

It's been a really light summer for me. I've been so busy w/ school I just haven't had time to really can much. So just various pasta sauces and soups.